In ongoing talent drain, Wells Fargo loses half-billion team to RIA

Wells Fargo continues to hemorrhage talent. A team managing nearly half a billion dollars, led by Jeffrey Nuttall, has joined ReDefine Wealth Management, a private boutique RIA in its Denver office.

The move comes at a bad time for Wells Fargo’s wealth management division, which amid scandals and mounting regulatory scrutiny, has lost more than 300 advisors over the last year.

In his new role, Nuttall will serve as a managing partner. He formerly was the senior vice president of investments at Wells Fargo, where he worked for 20 years, and managed $525 million in assets in 2016, according to Barron’s. The move follows a year of high advisor attrition from the bank. Wells Fargo declined to comment on the team’s departure.

“Our industry seems to be in a rush to commoditize advisor behavior and therefore the client experience,” Nuttall says. He added that to continue to give his clients the best options, he felt he needed to be at a different type of firm.

“We know that we are going to have to build our vision from the ground up,” Nuttall says.

While at Wells Fargo, Nuttall won many awards for his performance. He was named one of America’s Top 1,200 Financial Advisors six consecutive times by Barron’s and was recognized three times as a Top 50 Bank Advisor in the U.S. by Bank Investment Consultant.

Nuttall is joined at ReDefine Wealth Management by his former Wells Fargo teammates, Mike Bredenberg and Nicole Garza. Along with co-founder Jason Inglis, they round out the team. Bredenberg will serve as the director of investments and chief compliance officer and Garza will serve as a director and client advisor. Both bring 20 years of experience to the firm.

A deaf ear to the best and brightest is not the path to excellence. This is why Harvard Business School raises the question why industry does not value its most effective managers. The inability of the brokerage industry to advance expert professional standing in advisory services is self defeating. SCW